Carpe diem the crap out of every single moment?
Urgency, glimmers, memorable moments, mortality
What is the difference between seeing the world as if for the first time as opposed to the last time?
I recently moderated a panel of authors who published their first book after the age of 50 (as did I), and it occurred to me how our creativity is shaped by our perceptions of time. To be precise, the way we feel our mortality influences the what, the how, and the why of our creativity.
When I turned 60, I watched a clip of Jamie Lee Curtis, who talked about the urgency she felt when she turned 60. She said, “Upon turning 60, I realized the tragedy of my death was not my death, but the creativity that I have inside me that didn’t get to come out. And so I woke up at 60 and thought, ‘If not now, when?’”
It’s a good question for us all, at any stage of life. She proceeded to list the number of movies she had in her production queue, and the crowd cheered for her as if she’d vanquished death itself.
I understood the urgency she felt. I felt the same way when I received a diagnosis of a thicket of heart problems when I was 54 that will forever alter the fabric of each day. But when I turned 60, I just didn’t want to feel urgency or the weight of deadlines anymore.
I decided that one gift of aging was to take things on my own time.
But perhaps that’s not the gift of aging so much as it is the gift of one’s proximity to death.
Memorable moments, glimmers
I recently read a quote from ’s new book, The Book of Alchemy, that has added a layer to my questions about urgency. Jaouad was first diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in 2011. She went into remission after receiving a bone marrow transplant, only to have the cancer return again in 2021. She had another bone marrow transplant, but the cancer returned for a third time in the summer of 2024.
The quote is interesting to me because her approach to life melts urgency away.
“It is exhausting to try to make every family dinner as meaningful as possible—to carpe diem the crap out of every single moment. So I am done doing that. Instead, I’ve had to shift to a different mind-set, which is the idea of living every day as if it’s your first—to wake up with a sense of curiosity and wonder and playfulness.”
Jaouad began jotting down ten memorable moments from each day in a stream-of-consciousness style. She has been surprised by the things that have bubbled up. “It’s always the small moments,” Jaouad said.
Her practice is similar to Pam Houston’s “glimmers,” which Houston defines as things that have attracted your attention for some reason or another, though their importance isn’t always immediately apparent.
Like Jaouad, it’s not just about the glimmers or the memorable moments; it’s about the process of being present, being curious.
“I trust so much the process of noticing the glimmer, even if I don’t know what it means or why I’m noticing it,” said Houston.
One definition of a kiss is curiosity.
It’s such a different response to mortality—to flip it so that it’s not a deadline but a doorway to see things anew. And all it takes is a single cognitive shift.
Deadlines can be great galvanizing forces, but they require a narrowness of purpose and vision, and a type of muscular exertion that sometimes isn’t fitting for the aging creative me right now.
I’ve spent a lifetime of getting things done, and my life has felt like a constant push and pull of effort as a result. Instead of mortality cracking the whip of my productivity, I’d like it to be an invitation to curiosity, to being present, to seeing things differently, to gentleness.
Oh, for more gentleness!
I know urgency and deadlines can be useful creative tools, but I’m just not so sure if or how well they serve me now.
“A creatively lived life is any life where you consistently choose the path of curiosity over fear,” said Elizabeth Gilbert.
I think that’s it: I want my mortality to give me curiosity, not fear of finality.
Ideally, urgency and curiosity are in play with each other—so you don’t have to pick one over the other. Sometimes, in other words, you can decide that today is the first day of your life, which will spark wonderful explorations and observations that open new creative doorways. But there is also the joy of finishing—the creative fuel of Curtis’s queue of films moving forward.
But curiosity drives me so much right now. In one of my stories, I have a character who claims that it is impossible to die in the middle of a kiss.
One definition of a kiss is curiosity. Perhaps it’s impossible to die in the middle of curiosity. Which is one definition of love.
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Because death (and life)
“For the person facing death, mourning begins in the present tense, in a series of private, preemptive goodbyes that take place long before the body’s last breath.”
—Suleika Jaouad
“To be well now is to learn to accept whatever body and mind I currently have.”
―Suleika Jaouad
“To learn to swim in the ocean of not-knowing—this is my constant work.”
―Suleika Jaouad
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What a super Sunday morning read, Grant. The love of my life (87) and I (73) spend every day reading, writing, exploring . . . and, yes, kissing. Also, I'm reading your remarkable book, The Art of Brevity. Only problem is, I have to keep stopping to make notes and look up words and people, (which leads to all kinds of other wonderful and interesting explorations).
I like the idea of writing down 10, well maybe 5, memorable moments.